One of the last of the original Thirteen Colonies and named after King
George II of England, Georgia was also the last confederate state to be
admitted back to the Union after heavy losses of human life in the
Civil War. Today, Georgia has fourteen of the country's top one hundred
fastest growing counties, second only to Texas.

Georgia is a wonderful state that is full of mountains in the north and
has beaches in the east. Georgia is also home to many famous and
inspirational Americans including James Bowie, one of our US presidents
James E. Carter, famous wrestler Hulk Hogan, civil rights activist
Martin Luther King, Jr., famous singer Gladys Knight, and many more.

Georgia's Incarceration Rates and Costs
An incarceration rate is how many people out of 100,000 are sent to
jail each month. Georgia's incarceration rates can varry between
seventy-four people a month to well over one thousand depending on the
county. Counties such as Grady, Troup, Richmond and Chatham all have
very high incarceration rates. Counties such as Bibb and Burke, have a
slightly lower incarceration rate of seven hundred to eight hundred,
but counties such as Cobb and Treutlen have even lower incarceration
rates between seventy-four and three hundred.

With our country's debt problems Georgia has to look for ways to cut
costs. In other states costs are being cut in the jails and prisons,
but not in Georgia. With Georgia's prison system being the
fifth-largest in our country, Georgia does not want to cut costs and
free prisoners they may not afford to keep with economic cuts.

With new laws that keep prisoners from getting out of jail sooner and
escalating methamphetamine problems, Georgia's prison population has
gone up quite a bit in the past few years. With an increasing
incarceration rate, Georgia's incarceration costs have passed 1 billion
dollars a year.

Though many belive that if "you do the crime, you do the time," others
belive that Georgia cannot keep up with the increasing cost to keep so
many inmates housed. They should look for alternative ways to deal with
law breakers instead of keeping them locked up in prison, even for
minute offenses.

Macon State Prison and Smith State
Prison
Though there are many fights that take place in prisons all across the
country, including Georgia, these two state prisons in Georgia have had
problems with guards beating inmates for "no reason." The families of
these two different people were not allowed to see their family member,
only pictures after they had learned of what had exactly happened to
them.

No matter how problematic this may sound there could have been many
reasons as to why the guards did what they did. With the issues of the
jails being extremely full the reasons could be related to racial or
ethnical differences.

No matter the reason, just be sure you talk to someone who works at the
prison or read articles by other inmates who have lived in either of
these prisons on countyjail.net to get reassurance that your loved ones
will not be harmed while they are in either of these two places.